than Alfred Tennyson,
albeit he has been a confessed doubter. But what he said of Arthur
Hallam is quite as true of himself:

"He fought his doubts, and gathered strength,
He would not make his judgment blind,
He faced the spectres of the mind
And laid them; thus he came at length,

To find a stronger faith his own,
And Power was with him in the night,
Which makes the darkness and the light,
And dwells not in the light alone."

Those words of his, so often quoted, are often sadly misused:

"There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds."

When men make these words an excuse for an attitude of habitual
negation and denial, assuming that it is better to doubt everything
than to believe anything, they grossly pervert the poet's meaning. It
is the _faith_ that lives in honest doubt that his heart applauds. He
is thinking of the fact that it is real faith in God which leads men
to doubt the dogmas which misrepresent God. But conscious as he is of
the shadow that lies upon our field of vision, he is always insisting
that it is in the light and not in the shadow that we must walk.
Therefore, although demonstration is impossible, faith is rational. So
do those great words of "The Ancient Sage" admonish us:

"Thou canst not prove that thou art body alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art spirit alone,
Nor canst thou prove that thou art both in one.
Thou canst not prove thou art immortal, no,
Nor yet that thou art mortal--nay, my son.
Thou canst not prove that I who speak with thee,
Am not thyself in converse with thyself,
For nothing worthy proving can be proven
Nor yet disproven. Wherefore be thou wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith!
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of 'Yes' and 'No,'
She sees the best that glimmers through the worst,
She feels the sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer through the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,
She finds the fountain where they wailed 'Mirage!'"

This illustrates Tennyson's mental attitude. If all who plume
themselves upon their doubts would put themselves into this posture of
mind, they would find themselves in possession of a very substantial
faith.

Tennyson has touched with light more than one problem